Tag Archives: Rocco Rossi

Conservatives ♥ Smitherman

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Conservatives For Smitherman!

Strike you as odd? Really? Like how odd? Jews For Jesus odd? Red Sox For Yankees odd?

When some prominent local conservatives signed a letter in support of George Smitherman’s mayoral candidacy yesterday, the interwebs concerned with such matters lit up. The Rob Ford/Rocco Rossi right wing base (or, in the case of Mr. Rossi, let’s call it Sue Ann Levy) were all up in arms, defining themselves as true or real conservatives as opposed to those who’d signed the Smitherman pledge who were.. how’d Sue Ann put it ..? “the fah-fah Rosedale crowd”. The same “fah-fah Rosedale crowd” Ms. Levy sought to represent when she ran in last year’s provincial by-election under the Progressive Conservative banner, proving once again that the new conservative mind has no institutional memory whatsoever; replaced entirely by a simple binary yes, no, yes, no, thought that can’t recall the events of the previous day let alone year.

For their part, supporters of Joe Pantalone waved the letter about as proof that Smitherman was, to use their candidate’s own nifty campaign catch-phrase, just another mini Mike Harris. An easy leap to make since the letter was signed by some former members of the Harris government. This was the smoking gun to show that Smitherman was a Liberal in name only.

The surprise of all this was that there was any surprise about this in the first place. Anyone who’s followed Smitherman’s political career at the provincial level must know that to succeed as he did in climbing the ladder of the Dalton McGuinty government, he had to be a dyed in the wool red Tory. (I’ve hyperlinked the term for all you youngsters out there unfamiliar with it.) In my day, Progressive Conservatives like John Robarts, Bill Davis, Robert Stanfield, Joe Clarke were what you’d call red Tories. Conservatives not viscerally anti-government and pathologically opposed to the notion of taxation. They were closer in spirit to one of the original conservatives, Edmund Burke, who thought society should conserve those aspects that were working while gradually changing those that weren’t.

When the Progressive Conservatives in Ontario successfully lurched radically right, the Liberal party tip-toed in that direction with them, ending up occupying the centre, centre-right. Thus becoming Red Tories. As a very high-powered member of that government, it should hardly be surprising then that Smitherman has attracted the support of socially liberal, fiscally conservative types like Isabel Bassett.

What we should know by now is that, at his most fundamental, George Smitherman is a political animal. He will be whatever he needs to be to get the number of votes needed to win office; listening to him earlier today being interview by Matt Galloway on Metro Morning proved that point again. The topic was governance and reform. As Smitherman showed last night at the urban issues debate, he comes prepared with appropriate talking points for the event at hand and will dispose of them as soon as he needs to.

Lifting an idea straight out of Paul Bedford’s talk on Tuesday, Rethinking Toronto’s Governance (which we talked about here yesterday), Smitherman floated the notion of keeping all 44 councillors but having 22 of them elected in expanded wards and the other 22 voted in on an at-large, city wide level. What about expanding the numbers of councillors, Galloway asked, as another solution to helping citizens reconnect with the local representatives. Less constituents/councillor. Scoffing, Smitherman responded — and I’m paraphrasing here — With the prevailing, anti-government winds out there? Proposing more politicians?!

You mean, actually lead, Matt?! Come on! That’s crazy talk. Even if more politicians might be good for the city, you don’t think I’m going to possibly suggest that now? In this anti-incumbent, anti-City Hall environment that I helped stir up? I could lose votes if I suggested that!

Red Tory. Blue Liberal. Centrist. George Smitherman can be all these things if he needs to be. As we have written previously here, he possesses an empty core that is constantly refilled with the fluid of the moment. An automaton, programmed to do nothing other than to win elections. No reason to think it’s not going to happen again.

— unsurprisedly submitted by Cityslikr

Rethinking Toronto’s Governance

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There’s a curious cross-current of municipal political… thinking, let’s call it, at work during our present election campaign. One, which is why I hesitated to use the word ‘thinking’, is the actual campaign. Not so much a struggle of ideas as it is a monkey like flinging of feces to see what sticks to both walls and opponents. The other, conducted off-site and largely away from the glare of the hepped-up media spotlight, occurs under the auspices of academics, former politicos and private citizens involved in the generic field of city building. The pointy-heads and fat cats, to use the vernacular of Rob Ford and Rocco Rossi.

Such an event was yesterday’s Rethinking Toronto’s Governance sponsored by the Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance at the Munk School of Global Affairs. Held just prior to the Jane Jacobs Prize presentations, it consisted of a talk by former Toronto Chief Planner, Paul Bedford, on ideas for changing the structure of the city’s electoral map. Ward numbers and boundaries, community council size and numbers, were all put out on the table for examination by Mr. Bedford. This was followed by responses to the proposals from Councillor Kyle Rae and Richard Joy of the Toronto Board of Trade.

I’ll spare you the details but highly encourage everyone to check out the IMFG website over the next couple days when they post the webcast of the session.

In a nutshell, however, I’ll sum up Mr. Bedford’s presentation like this: a dozen years into it and Toronto remains amalgamated on paper only; there’s still precious little real citizen participation and the tools for addressing these issues are within the city’s control both with the City of Toronto act as well as legislative powers it already possessed. The last point is of particular interest to us here at All Fired Up in the Big Smoke as we have constantly railed about the intrusion of the province in Toronto’s business. Maybe too much at the expense of letting our municipal politicians off the hook, although we did find this an interesting read this morning.

Mr. Rae’s response to this was very revealing. The outgoing councillor for Ward 27, he’s been at it for 19 years now and has become the focus of the campaign as a symbol for all that is wrong with City Hall and its wasteful spending ways, what with his $12 000 retirement bash. While very enthusiastic about many of the ideas being tossed around the room, he expressed some serious reservations about implementing them. Some of it came across as self-serving and little more than a justification for inaction on the part of council. He seemed beaten down by the process after nearly two decades of contending with it and his stance may be the best argument for the idea of term limits. Governing is a war between competing interests and no one should be at war for too long.

However, Mr. Rae delivered a couple key points. City council is still a ward-centric, parochial body that often undercuts city wide planning and vision for the sake of local sensibilities. Not only are the councillors guilty of this, in Rae’s view, but many citizens hold on tightly to their pre-amalgamated view of the ‘old’ Toronto. They are resistant to and suspicious of change regardless of the merits and possible contribution to city-wide progress.

This is coupled with a municipal bureaucracy also allergic to change or innovation according to Mr. Rae. Nothing new to that complaint from an elected official, and one that is being trumpeted out on the campaign trail. But here’s the thing. Like it or not, the bureaucracy is an integral part of any successful public entity. Can’t live with it, can’t live without it. A necessary evil, if that’s the particular angle you want to take. The thing is, belittling the bureaucracy, taking it to task or threatening it with dire consequences if it doesn’t bend to your almighty will seems petulant, patronizing and, most importantly, counterproductive.

A bureaucracy consists of people. Like most people, it reacts best to positive reinforcement, to be considered part of the process and integral to the building of a better organization, a better city. It needs direction and a reason to carry out change not to resist it. That can only come from bringing it a forward looking vision, an affirmative and invigorating mission statement for you more business oriented types.

None of this have we seen from the pool of candidates we are being told will spit forth our next mayor. So it’s tough to imagine how we will build a stronger, more unified city in the future with any of those we are threatening to elect to lead us. It just seems, regardless of what is being touted on the campaign trail, we will have more of the same ol’, same ol’.

— thoughtfully submitted by Cityslikr

The Real Fringe Candidates

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Yesterday was a decisive day in the 2010 campaign for mayor of Toronto because September 13th will be seen as the moment we finally achieved critical mass for crazy. In taking the battle for the Spadina Expressway underground, Rocco Rossi firmly confirmed his divisive status, going for broke with a full frontal assault on the downtown core in an effort to endear himself to those dwelling both physically and psychologically in Ford Country. We wish Mr. Rossi well in whatever future endeavours he pursues after the election as long as it never includes holding elected office.

We’d been joking around the office last week about the shape of the collective campaign strategy of the 4 front running candidates chasing Rob Ford. It seemed to consist of nothing more than cuddling up closer and closer to him on the right side of the political spectrum in the hopes of forcing Ford to do or say something really, really nuts. Some big hunk of 100% grade-A red meat to his fanatical base which would be a little too Fordian-tastic for those just sampling where to place their angry vote. Like say, a call for the introduction of public executions by tying people to unused streetcar tracks and running over them with a car.

Who knew with his Toronto Tunnel Rossi would actually attempt to leapfrog Ford into the deep end of batshit insane?

Rossi’s announcement came at the same time I was sitting in the auditorium at the Dovercourt Baptist Church at TOVotes — Guaranteed Change at City Hall, a gathering of registered candidates very few people in the mainstream media were paying much attention to. (The Star’s Katie Daubs, the Globe’s Marcus Gee and Global TV’s Jackson Proskow were in attendance covering the gathering.) They were council candidates from a handful of wards around the city and the event was organized by HiMY SYeD, himself an outsider candidate for mayor. An introduction and orientation, if you will, with Mr. SYeD presenting a couple internet sites that he will launch to assist candidates in getting their names and platforms out to a wider audience. The candidates mingled, took turns talking to the press present and then got a chance to introduce themselves and their platforms to the audience.

I wasn’t there wearing rose coloured glasses. These folks seeking elected office were where they were because they lacked money and resources to run a high profile campaign, they didn’t have big name, backroom boys overseeing their operations and the media (Mssrs. Gee and Proskow and Ms. Daubs aside) had not deemed them worthy of serious consideration. Theirs was an uphill battle, to be sure, despite the fact that as HiMY SYeD pointed out, this was a once in a generation election with 20% of wards wide open with no sitting councillors in the race. “City Hall is bleeding incumbents,” as the event invite stated.

For sure, there were a couple cranks present in the Rob Ford mold, railing about out-of-control spending, over-taxation, corruption. How couldn’t there be? It is all the rage this election season.

But mostly what I saw were people galvanized around a concern for making Toronto a better, more accessible city not wild-eyed, pro-business fundamentalists bound on cutting it down to size. There was anger, for sure. Just not at the usual targets the mainstream press and their mayoral candidates are telling us people are angry at.

I had a conversation with Patrick Smyth, a campaign staffer for Terry Mills, a soft spoken but articulate candidate running to unseat Karen Stintz in Ward 16. Neither Smyth nor Mills seemed driven into the political arena for the reasons we are told that the electorate is angry out there. Both men are aware of the changing nature of Toronto, and the need for intensification and increased density. It’s just that their experience has left them feeling that citizens are being dictated not listened to. They are angry, yes, about the top down, exclusive, ad hoc nature of planning in Toronto.

None of which can possibly be addressed in the Rob Ford (and his increasingly evil-minded doppelganger, Rocco Rossi) slash and burn vision of the city under their rule. Our council is not burdened down with over representation. How cutting the number of councillors in half will increase citizen participation is part of both men’s magical mystery arithmetic. Less representation cannot equal more representation anymore than tunneling under the downtown core can alleviate traffic congestion.

These are the fringe ideas running amok in this campaign, and yet they are emanating from the camps of the so-called serious candidates. While we give time, space and credence to Rossi et al as they run around emptily embracing change and promising to take back City Hall with their increasingly bizarre and dangerous assault on democracy, the real grassroots, mainstream movement is happening in gatherings like that at Dovercourt Baptist Church yesterday. Real people with real concerns and real policies about how to make Toronto more livable, more inclusive and more equitable.

With just 6 weeks to go until we elect a new mayor and council, maybe we should start listening to those corners of the democratic process if we really want to make make Toronto into our own image.

— dutifully submitted by Cityslikr